Not-quite-daily news and musings from the editor of Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Teens & Online Social Networking...

If you're the parent of a teen, or, like me, employ teenage babysitters, you know they spend a great deal of time IM-ing their friends or haunting social networking sites. (Yes, I've been known to investigate what my babysitters are doing online when Murray's sleeping.) Here's a link to an article stating that more than half of teens in the U.S. use MySpace and FaceBook.

I also heard an interesting piece on Day to Day on NPR recently, for which the reporter talked to a group of college students about privacy issues in the Internet age. If you have time, click the link and listen. I was kind of shocked at how little they care or worry about their privacy.

What did teenagers do before they all had MySpace profiles and cell phones? I remember leaving notes in a friend's desk every day. Notes written on paper. With pens. Complete with punctuation. (But, hey, I also went to the library to work on research papers and listened to albums.)

Teenagers are strange and interesting creatures. And all you YA writers out there have to pay attention to what they're doing. I guess that's easier than ever. They're strange and interesting, but not quite so mysterious thanks to the Internet.

3 comments:

My seventeen year old is way into TEXTING. They are actual friends (and when she's grounded, I know I should take the phone away, but really it feels like taking away an arm or maybe a pinkie. Though to her it might feel like a torso), so the appeal and gratification is immediate. I on the other hand am not usually amused. Nothing like "sharing" conversations with a technical device, and to know the device is way more engaging. Geh.